Throughout most of human history it was not understood that the
Earth has been battered by large asteroids and comets and that the
impacts and subsequent environmental changes have serious consequences for the survival and evolution of life on the planet. But in the
past50 years more than 170 impact structures have been identified on the surface of the Earth (Earth Impact Database, 2008.
http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/index.html). Were it
not for the Earth’s protective atmosphere, oceans, erosion and plate
tectonics, the surface of the Earth would be saturated with impact
craters like most other atmosphereless solid bodies in our Solar System. While the impact probability is now relatively well understood
as a function of the impactor size (e.g.Brown et al., 2002; Harris,
2007) this work addresses specific questions related to discovering
impacting asteroids before they hit the Earth. In particular, we build
upon the work ofChesley and Spahr (2004)and determine the skyplane distribution of impacting asteroids before impact and the
effectiveness of the next generation large synoptic sky surveys at
identifying impactors.